In CrossFit we love to talk about functional, foundational movements because they are such an integral part of the way we move our bodies throughout our daily existence. As adults, we frequently have to exert considerable effort into learning how to squat correctly. Meanwhile, very young children tend to do so without any prompting at all for the simple reason that they haven’t had time to learn it wrong yet. Toddlers have no interest in self improvement. They just want to play with their legos in a comfortable position. Our early movement patterns are generally characterized by near perfect mechanics because the “best” way to perform functional movements also tend to be the most efficient or easiest way. In our CrossFit Kids and particularly our Pre-K classes, we return often to the Squat as a skill focus in an effort to preserve these initial “perfect” movement patterns and decrease the need to relearn them later in life.
